Special Spaces at Daniels' Cinema Tower Taking Shape

UrbanToronto had the opportunity for a quick tour of the Cinema Tower construction site earlier this week. The Daniels Corporation's Ingrid Gritanni, Senior Project Manager at the Cinema site was our tour guide through the lower and top floors of the podium where a number of the building's special spaces have now taken shape. Here's a look at the current state of things.

Cinema Tower's podium from south along Widmer, image by Craig White 2012.02.13

The shot above, from the southwest shows how far along Cinema Tower is at the moment: the superstructure for the podium is done, and work has started on the first of the typical floors of the tower above. Before we go any further, here's the rendering of what to expect when everything is done at this Kirkor Architects-designed building. So, we will pick out a few details of the rendering and then take a look at how those areas look now.

The Podium at Cinema Tower when complete

The lobby entrance is found near the south end of the podium on Widmer - but we don't have any great shots of the lobby space to show you, so we'll move on. Note the Artscape space to the north of it, and around the corner on Adelaide, note the glass box extending from the podium that says 'retail' on it. On the roof of the podium there is a future terrace amenity, which will be partly sheltered under the sweeping roof. Note the curve of the tower's west elevation above the roof. We we take a look at all of these things - although there's no sweeping roof to ogle yet.

First: the bones of the Artscape space. This will be performance space for local theatre troupes. The flexible auditorium features a mezzanine which you can see partially complete at the back.

Cinema Tower's Artscape space, image by Craig White 2012.02.13

Below: Outside again for a look at the podium from Adelaide and Widmer.

There will be a fair bit of outdoor public plaza space at the corner here, before the retail bump-out seen in the rendering above. Here's a closer view of the retail space seen from the public plaza area:

Like the Artscape space, this area is double-height, and depending upon the eventual tenant, it can have a mezzanine worked into the plans to suit. Daniels would love to see a restaurant take this space. Below; some of the interior, from the interior. The space is larger than one might image from outside.

Cinema Tower's retail space, image by Craig White 2012.02.13

Let's go up to the podium's roof. First, here's the current view from the future amenity terrace.

The Pinnacle on Adelaide will block that from this particular angle, but it gives you an idea of what purchasers here will see from units in the lower floors, which will be south of the Pinnacle tower. Looking to the right from the above shot, we can see that those lower floors are now under construction.

So, no glitz and glamour yet - just some serious concrete and rebar to keep a construction geek happy! There's lots more on Cinema Tower in our dataBase listing with glitz and glamour though, linked below. Otherwise, if you'd like to get in on the conversation, there are the associated Forum threads down there too!